


i'd kiss his mouth and be sunshine again ( but just for him )

by flightofwonder



Category: Papillon (1973), Papillon (2018)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of canon typical violence, Nicknames, References to PTSD, Spooning, but there are mentions of sexual violence, discussion of consent, prison is fun!, rape is only discussed but i tagged it as a warning just in case, so please be careful, they're married don't @ me, this is so self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 04:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17717825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightofwonder/pseuds/flightofwonder
Summary: “Fuck me.”Dega flinched away so hard, he might as well have been slapped.





	i'd kiss his mouth and be sunshine again ( but just for him )

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, will be the least historically accurate thing you've ever read.
> 
> Honestly! I have no idea what this is! I just came home from work one day and... started writing this idea like crazy. I have no idea how to feel about it. It's self-indulgent and sappy. Let me know what you think.

“Fuck me.”

Dega flinched away so hard, he might as well have been slapped.

Papillon didn’t understand, but he scrambled to remedy his obvious mistake. The lack of contact with the man who moments ago had been kissing his collarbone left him feeling hollow and needy. He could feel how flushed his cheeks must be, and he was still half hard from where Dega had been straddling him just moments before – Papi was always conscientious of Louis’ bad leg now, though Louis almost never complained about it – but all true sense of arousal seeped out of him at the sight of Louis crouching a few feet away, arms around his knees, head ducked low.

“Louis.” Henri spoke so gently, and he was reminded of his own father’s voice a lifetime ago, trying to ease a colt from a fit of panic. But Papi had no real footing here. He had no idea what he had done to spook his friend so badly.

“Louis,” he tried again, almost whispering now. “ _Mon cocon_.”

The silly but affectionate nickname was enough to at least get the other man to look up with a ghost of a grin on his face, though he still didn’t quite meet his gaze.

“ _Mon coeur_ – whatever I did, forgive me. Please.”

He reached out his hand like a beggar desperate for an alm.

" _Reviens-moi?_ ”

Louis did not deny him. He limped back to Papillon’s side as slowly as possible, but he took the offered hand as he sat down next to their spot by the fire. Immediately, he started to repetitively rub his thumb against the palm of Papillon’s hand, as if Papi was the one who needed comfort or an apology. Papillon shifted his grip so that his hand curled around Dega’s fingers instead, then pulled them forward to kiss his knuckles. He felt the other man shudder, and his concern only grew.

“Tell me what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t –“ Louis took a deep breath. “It wasn’t you. It’s… you know I’ve never been with any man but you. I don’t…”

Papillon didn’t quite understand, but he understood well enough that he had pushed Louis too far. His stomach churned; he had never designed to be one of those men who only cared about their own pleasure, and he certainly had no desire to be comparable to the animals in here tried for such crimes.

“I won’t ask again,” he said with conviction, but he fell quiet as Louis shook his head. He still didn’t meet his gaze, but by the way his brows furrowed in the firelight, Papillon could sense that frustration was beginning to overpower his anxiety, or at the very least, his rattled mind was making room for it.

“I’m not asking you to -- I want to understand --”

Papillon kept silent, opting to wait out whatever question Louis was still struggling to voice. Their shoulders touched, and he could feel Dega’s side rise and fall with a quiet sigh.

“You’ve never hurt me.” It was whispered in the space between them, around them, in their alcove that could hardly be called a room. The fire they huddled around reflected in the glass shielding Dega’s eyes, hiding whatever lay behind them.

“No,” Papillon started, the query obvious in his tone. Of course he never hurt Louis, but this was a simple fact between them, like knowing there was a sun in the sky. What this had to do with their current situation still escaped him.

“Then why would you ask me to hurt you?”

And he sounded so despondent, so utterly miserable, that it took Papillon longer than he would have liked to put the pieces together. But when he did, the realization hit him like a runaway cart of stones.

Louis didn’t _know_. All he knew about men loving men came from this stinking hellhole. He never had the benefit of lustful, joyful trysts with like-minded men he met at Parisian clubs, or even the first fumbling attempts at adolescent lovemaking, when nothing made sense, but nothing needed to. The excitement, the mistakes, the stifled laughter in the barn house between two boys. There was still some lingering painful nostalgia associated with those memories, but he looked back on most of them in fondness. He loved men and he loved women. He had known this about himself long before he was ever shipped off to prison and fate brought him to Dega.

But Louis, he had only had women before marrying his wife. He had talked about an ancient affection he had for the gardener’s son, and how he would lose his glasses for an excuse to hold the boy’s hand as they wandered on the grounds. _Always the damsel_ , Papi had joked, earning a punch on the arm.

His bastard of a father put an end to all that, of course. Louis hadn’t expanded on the details, but Papi knew enough about his upbringing now to connect the dots on his own.

Papillon knew that he was Louis’ first male lover, but he hadn’t considered how their circumstances shaped that fact, too enraptured by the here and now to focus on anything else. Louis may have been new at taking men to bed, but he was hardly a blushing virgin. He took to lovemaking the way he did to most things: he was attentive, and quick, and stubborn to the last. Maybe someone else would be surprised to find that he had a dominant streak, but not Papillon, and he took to the challenge eagerly when their affectionate tumbles turned playful.

They had kissed, groped and gotten one another off many times now, coming together in their corner of the island, sometimes touching with the urgency of their years kept apart, and other times they moved deliberately slow. If Dega cared that any guard or prisoner could hear their needy moans in the dark, he never said so. But Papillon was beyond considering what other men thought. To hell with all them.

It was only recently had Papi convinced his lover that taking Louis’ cock in his mouth wasn’t some shameful act of submission, and that, in fact, he loved making his partners feel good. In hindsight, that discussion should have been his first clue.

Nothing worked in here the way it did in the real world. Sex had almost nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with power. It was sometimes like that outside of this place too, of course. But put a herd of rapists together on an island vying for power, and the consequences made themselves known soon enough.

And suddenly, Papillon felt like he was going to be sick. Seven years. He had been separated from Louis for _seven years_. A wide array of horrors could have happened to him during that time. He had never asked because Louis was still alive and strong and himself and _his_.

Or maybe he didn’t ask because he didn’t want to know. A cowardly excuse. Even now, his voice shook as he forced himself to ask.

“Were you – Louis, did anyone- "

“No,” Louis said sharply. He must have been wearing a frightful expression, because when Louis looked over to him, his face instantly softened, and he shifted his hand that was still held in Papillon’s own and squeezed it tight.

“No,” he said again, this time with a reassuring tone. “Nothing like that. But I’ve… seen it. They’ve never tried to hide it, not at the prison, and not here.”

Dega pulled his hands free to raise the rims of his glasses and rub at his eyes. Whether the firelight was hurting his vision or tears were threatening to well, Papillon couldn’t tell.

“I can’t do that to you. I’ve been the cause of enough of your pain.”

And now Papi was at risk of shedding tears, because Louis deserved so much better than this. He deserved to learn the touch of a man in safety, or wherever two men in love could find such a thing in this hateful word. Wherever that was, it wasn’t here on Devil’s Island. And nothing Papillon could do would erase what Louis had lived with for over a decade of his life.

Papillon reached out again and grasped the side of Louis’ head, fingers curling in his dark strands, and turned it so that he was facing his way. He needed him to hear this, to believe this. Not for him, or for them, but for Dega alone.

“Louis,” he whispered, his thumb stroking the old scar on his cheek, “it’s not like that. It’s not supposed to be. When two men want to give each other pleasure, when they love each other… it’s not like here at all. I wasn’t asking you to hurt me, I was asking you to love me in another way. That’s all.”

Dega stared at him, a million questions reflecting in his face. Maybe he was expecting Papillon to laugh, but that was the last thing he wanted to do at that moment. Louis bit his bottom lip, and Papi smoothed his hand down to the other man’s neck, cradling it.

“There was… Papi, there was so much blood.” The tremble in his voice was enough to set Papillon on the path of righteous fury, though he had nobody he could enact his anger towards.

“In some ways, it’s the same with women as it is with men. If one party doesn’t… care about the comfort or pleasure of the other,” and Papillon had to spit out those words, almost tasting the vileness of the notion on his tongue, “then the other is sometimes badly hurt. Not always, and if they aren’t, that doesn’t make it any less of a terrible crime, but it is… more than likely.”

Talking even ambiguously about the subject was threatening to upturn his stomach, but he knew he was getting somewhere as he watched Louis’ expression slowly shift from that terribly familiar mixture of fear and self-loathing, to one of tentative curiosity. Papi had long since favored one look over the other.

“But women have the capacity for it to be pleasurable. We don’t. It’s nature’s design.”

“Louis,” he started with a heavy deadpan, “if Mother Nature didn’t want us to fuck each other and enjoy it, she wouldn’t have put a clit up our ass.”

The other man sputtered, then obviously tried to come off as indignant, but his surprised fits of giggles betrayed his amusement. At the sight of a smile, Papillon leaned over and planted a relieved kiss on those still laughing lips.

“You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“And where did you learn that?”

“I’m the son of two schoolteachers, remember?” and that transformed Louis’ stifled giggles into full-bodied laughter, and Papillon had to kiss the hollow of his throat to feel the thrum of that wonderful vibration.

“I’m not kidding. We basically have a clit up our ass, though it’s just as much a bitch to find as any woman’s is.”

“Hm. My schoolings somehow emitted that,” Louis said, trying to calm his heaving breast.

“What? A good Christian schooling failing to educate the French masses on the bodily intricacies of sodomy? I can’t imagine.”

“Alright, alright,” Louis conceded, patting Papillon’s bicep in surrender. His voice was lighter and playful, and Papillon immediately relaxed at the sound of it. If this were another time and place, Papi might worry about how much of his own contentment now rested on another man’s shoulders. As it was, he simply slid down the stone wall to lean his head on Louis’ shoulder, soaking up the one source of peace and warmth he could find on this wretch of a place. He had long since accepted the fact that he would move mountains if it meant Louis Dega was safe.

He felt dry, chapped lips, still warm and still familiar, lightly press to the crown of his head, and Papillon smiled.

They fell easily into a comfortable silence, one that followed them most of their days, unassuming and sure. Papi closed his eyes. He did not like the dark, in any of its myriad of shapes, but it was easier to track his lover’s heartbeat like his, ear against his collarbone, counting each pulse to ten, then starting again. This was how he fell asleep every night: counting the innumerable cycles of life in a man that should be dead. It was easier than trying to count his own.

“I don’t tell you this with an expectation,” he then said out of the silence, opening his eyes. “Or as some sort of test. I’m happy with what we have.”

“I know.”

“And I know you’d never want to hurt me.”

It never occurred to him that it was Dega who harbored this anxiety between the two of them, but by the way his entire body shuttered in response, Papi had to wonder what other very obvious signs of distress he had missed.

Because of course Dega must have wondered. He was the one of the two of them who had dead man’s blood on his hands. But Papillon didn’t care, not anymore. Neither of them had clean slates, and he had learned long ago that comparing their crimes was a futile endeavor when both had the same consequence. What mattered infinitely more was having Louis by his side.

“Well,” Louis said, sitting up straighter and shaking his head for just a moment, a tick that always appeared when he wanted to save face. “I apologize for ruining the moment.”

This conversation was over as far as Louis was concerned. Still, as Papillon got to his feet, he couldn’t help the need to reassure him.

“You didn’t ruin the moment. If anything, I got… overexcited,” he admitted with as much bashfulness as he ever allowed himself to show. He had been with men who never fucked him, and he had never felt unfulfilled for it. Those who did fuck him knew the steps and intricacies of what it entailed, which was far too big a thing to ask of Louis. He had gone such a long time without human touch, and Louis had been gripping his waist just so, and leaving deep, bruising kisses on his neck, and –

And _no, no, stupid prick, we aren’t starting that right now_ , he thought as he dropped onto their bedroll by the fire.

Of course Louis, the absolute asshole, was looking at him with a knowing smirk on his face from across the fireplace where he still sat, and Papillon resisted the childish urge to throw a vegetable in his face.

But he kept his mouth shut as he joined Papi’s side. Papillon instantly unfolded his limbs so that Louis could tuck his arm under his shoulder and hold onto his chest, an imitation of their first night at the prison. Louis’ weak leg rested in its familiar spot between Papillon’s own two legs to help keep it warm and to still the erratic tremors that Dega would never stop apologizing for, no matter how many times Papi told him to shut up about it already.

Papillon allowed himself only a few moments of time every night to think about what life could be like after they escaped. Tonight, he thought about down feather pillows and silk-spun sheets and his husband’s breath on the back of his neck. Impossible, unattainable things. He never let himself dwell on them for more than the span of a thought or two.

But tonight, when he would usually shift his thoughts towards ideas of a more tangible escape, he opted to focus on the now. On the dry cold ground, on the prickling of hay at their heads, and on Dega’s hand resting on his chest, right below his butterfly tattoo. Feather-light, but the contact was definitely there. Maybe he counted a dead man’s heartbeats, too.

“Do you want to do anything?”

“Do you?”

Silence. Then, Papi felt Dega’s forehead press against the back of his shoulder. Papillon pulled him in closer, started counting the reverberations he could feel coming from Louis’ chest pressed to his back, and closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, the “mon cocon" nickname actually came from me being an idiot. When I saw this in theaters, I thought the note from Louis had said "you will have a cocoon in your bucket every day from now own", and that this rich boy was running with the butterfly metaphor, but no... it just said coconut. But I like my interpretation better. So, "my cocoon" as a sappy nickname it is!
> 
> "Mon coeur" = "My heart"  
> “Reviens-moi?” = "Come to me?"
> 
> The intricacies of gay sex in the early 20th century in France isn't the most well-documented thing, but we know it was a thing, at least, so a lot of these are assumptions. I once again apologize for inaccuracies. I just thought the idea of falling in love with a man for the first time in the setting of a prison might really warp one's perceptions of gay sex, and I wanted to explore that a bit. Also, I wanted them to cuddle. What else is new.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
